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The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: Building Beds and Borders with Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, and Bulbs

By Tracy DiSabato-Aust

Timber Press, 2009

460 pages, $31.50 Paperback

This excellent reference and design book will aid any reader to envision and then plan a mixed garden of their own. Written by media darling and triathlete Tracy DiSabato-Aust, and reissued from her 2003 hardcover, the paperback is a dense book loaded with information.

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One look at her toned arms on the front cover and you know she’s no stranger to digging in a garden.

Divided into three sections, the book tackles design principles, case studies, and a large reference section with DiSabato-Aust’s encyclopedia of plant combinations.

Any reader of The Da Vinci Code will automatically understand her love affair with the Fibonacci Series and the Golden Mean. She believes that garden design should use the 1.6:1 ratio. If the length of a flower bed is 16 metres, then the width should be roughly 10 metres.

The first section discusses design principles for mixed gardens and answers basic questions about flowers and the design process. DiSabato-Aust explains design principles and colour, texture and form; the importance of drawing a plan; and art in the mixed garden. Rounding out the section is a chapter on maintenance.

The case studies in part two are instructive since detailed plans accompany all studies. Included with the plans are all the different plants, and their hardiness zone number. This section is very handy for people to see what works in their zone and then just duplicate the plantings.

Small, medium and large gardens are all showcased in this section. The hundreds of lush photographs perfectly capture the colour and composition of the gardens.

Part Three will be well-thumbed by readers. The reference section begins with encyclopedia of plant combinations, and then moves to the appendixes which list scientific and common names, plants by design characteristics, and then plants by maintenance characteristics. A plant hardiness zone map for the United States, a glossary, bibliography, sources and an index completes the book.

Peggy Mackenzie is a Toronto Star librarian addicted to home, decor and gardening books. Contact her with book review requests at pmackenzie@thestar.ca.

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